That day, when every plant in Cheonghwajin surged as though ready to sink the entire city—
a child standing at the stern of a ship stared at the receding Cheonghwajin with yellow eyes.
The image of a breathtakingly beautiful boy with dark brown eyes and hair, as deep as the night itself, was etched into his mind.
‘Mu-won, let’s come back someday—to take our revenge.’
Maybe because it was the first time he had ever killed someone, Tae Cheon-oh’s hands were trembling.
The few survivors from the Eleventh Continent had managed to seize the ship amid the chaos. The plants that had burst from the ground had wiped out every one of Aduran’s subordinates. The children who had joined later hadn’t witnessed that scene, and the adults kept silent about it—because they all instinctively knew that the Flower Clan had to be involved.
Those who had reached Cheonghwajin were natives of the Eleventh Continent. They believed the Flower Clan was the reason their land had sunk, and so they wished the surviving children would never get entangled with such beings.
The children, in turn, hid the fact that they had killed with their own hands.
‘Hey, Mu-won. Do you think he’ll be all right?’
Wrapping his shoulders with a tattered blanket, Tae Cheon-oh spoke again.
‘I think his mother’s dead. We should’ve brought him with us.’
Had Mu-won known they would escape Cheonghwajin safely, he might have agreed. The boy, who had looked up at him through tears while covering his mouth with both hands, had looked so heartbreakingly sad…
Mu-won pressed a hand against his suddenly aching chest as he gazed back at the fading Cheonghwajin.
*******
“Sir, are you feeling unwell?”
When Mu-won awoke and pressed his hand against his chest, Mok-seong spoke up in worry.
For a brief moment, the sound of crashing waves made Mu-won think he was back on that old ship leaving Cheonghwajin behind. But now, he stood aboard the Peira, a warship adrift on the sea—an indomitable vessel known as the “invincible battleship.”
Mu-won unconsciously pulled out a cigarette and lit it. As Mok-seong leaned in to light it for him, Mu-won patted his head twice.
Those who had survived Cheonghwajin later traveled across the continents to gather what remained of their kind. Most of those currently belonging to Peira were survivors of the Eleventh Continent.
Among them had been infants like Mok-seong, as well as elderly men and women. The truth was, no one welcomed the survivors of the Eleventh Continent anywhere—they were said to be cursed, their homeland swallowed by the sea as punishment. Those who lived hid their identities and took to the ocean, working on ships in secret.
Mu-won, too, had drifted from one continent to another, spending more time at sea than on land. Clashes with pirates had become his daily routine.
“Yeah,” he muttered, exhaling smoke through his teeth. “We really lived like dogs.”
Mu-won rarely reminisced about the past—there was little worth calling a memory.
“Sir, did you call me?”
“Why is it, Mok-seong,” Mu-won said dryly, “that whenever someone says ‘dog,’ you come running?”
Mok-seong scratched his neck awkwardly, then went back to cleaning the dome.
After leaving Cheonghwajin, Mu-won had roamed from continent to continent with the adults, and once he grew older, he and Tae Cheon-oh began raiding pirates and seizing their ships. He had nearly died countless times—enough that what happened in Cheonghwajin seemed trivial by comparison. Killing to survive became a habit, and with it came notoriety. Reaching his goal afterward wasn’t all that difficult.
The Peira of today—it had once been the warship used by the Eleventh Continent’s high command to flee when their land collapsed.
Through his search across continents, Mu-won eventually learned that the Cheon-gang gang of the Third Continent had taken control of the Peira.
When the ship drifted to the docks of the Third Continent, it had been empty, and Cheon-gang simply claimed it.
By that time, Mu-won and Tae Cheon-oh had already built their own power base in their late teens.
Before the fall, the natives of the Eleventh Continent had been few, yet they ruled over the countless refugees who had fled there—because they possessed something unique: power.
The native bloodline of the Eleventh Continent, called the Gwon Clan, were born with inhuman strength—so much that people once called them War gods.
Centuries ago, when sea levels had risen dramatically, many of them perished. A large portion of the vast Eleventh Continent had been submerged. The surviving Gwon Clan were those with exceptional might—true monsters among men.
To preserve their pure blood, the Gwon Clan had long practiced inbreeding, coupling only among themselves. After several generations, beings like Mu-won and Tae Cheon-oh were born—creatures that could hardly be called human anymore.
With only fifteen men, Mu-won annihilated Cheon-gang’s horde of hundreds.
To him, the Peira had been a childhood playground—he knew every nook and flaw. Taking the ship back was no act of theft. It was reclamation.
On a night when the crescent moon hung low, Mu-won and Tae Cheon-oh dropped anchor and climbed up the stern of the Peira. They went straight into the plant-filled dome—an arboretum impervious even to sea winds.
At the moss-covered corner of the left floor, an iron hook barely peeked through the green.
It was the ship’s only vulnerable point—seal all the iron doors, and the Peira became an impenetrable fortress.
They moved swiftly toward the captain’s quarters and severed the head of Cheon-gang’s boss. Literally—cut it clean off and hung it on the deck. The women who had been imprisoned there were set free on land.
Once the boss and his lieutenants were dead, the rest was easy. Apart from a handful of useful ones, the rest were rabble. Their arrogance—that no one would dare attack them from within—had been their downfall. Cheon-gang fell in a single night. That was how Mu-won took the Peira.
No—he hadn’t stolen it. It had always been his.
Mu-won looked down at the spot where once a flower had bloomed—the one he had blown away. Only leaves and grass remained, no sign of new blossoms.
The dome was his sanctuary, yet unlike before, when he had basked in the warmth and rested in peace, lately a certain face would surface in his mind—always followed by a grating, unpleasant feeling.
“Mok-seong,” he called, “what about the herbalist?”
Startled out of watching the birds flitting through the arboretum, Mok-seong straightened up.
“Well, it’s been over a week since we put up the notices, but still no word! I’ll go check again right away—just in case!”
Grabbing a sack, he dashed off like a panting puppy.
Two weeks now. It had been two weeks since that herbalist bastard abandoned his medicine shop and vanished right before his eyes.
If that bastard wasn’t a Flower Clan member, would he really need to run like that?
Thinking back, Tae Cheon-oh’s words had made sense—who wouldn’t be terrified with Tae Mu-won closing in from all sides?
But that herbalist had even lied about being hired for cleaning work, just to rummage through the scrapyard.
Tae Cheon-oh had been the one to argue that, being poor, the herbalist was probably scavenging the floating city’s garbage heaps for something usable. Had the herbalist given that excuse instead of lying, Mu-won might not have been so suspicious.
Feeling the weight of boredom creep in, Mu-won rose from his rocking chair. His eyes flicked, as they always did, to the gravestone half-hidden in the grass. Then he left the dome and stepped onto the deck.
At the bridge connecting the Peira to land, four or five men stood guard. As the heart of Peira, the warship was protected around the clock. Mu-won handed a few bills from his wallet to the subordinates who bowed to him.
“Go have a drink,” he said casually. They bent nearly double in gratitude.
Though some of them were older than Mu-won, all obeyed him and Tae Cheon-oh without question.
Like the Gwon Clan of the Eleventh Continent, strength was what mattered here. Call it beastly hierarchy if you wished, but in times like these, humanity meant nothing for survival.
Setting foot on land, Mu-won walked past the docks and along the canal leading into the city.
The massive waterway that ran through the heart of Cheonghwajin—from beginning to end—was called the Cheonghwa Canal. Countless smaller canals crisscrossed the city, so people mostly traveled by small ferries.
Notices seeking the herbalist had been plastered in every district, yet there’d been no sign of him. Which meant he wasn’t traveling by boat—he was moving on foot, in secret.
Mu-won was sure by now the herbalist had slipped into another district.
He looked toward the direction of the bridge connecting E-District to the others. It wasn’t close enough to see from here, of course.
To abandon his shop and flee like that—Mu-won would drag him back no matter what, just to hear what excuses that pretty face would make. If he could manage to listen before his fist swung first, that’d be a miracle.
Soon even walking felt bothersome. Mu-won turned his gaze toward the canal. Along the water, small ferries lined up, waiting for passengers.
Without hesitation, he leapt onto the nearest one.